Nehemiah Morgan did not say anything to that. There was not anything to say. He sat at his brother's table with his brother's honest letter under his hand and looked at the girl his brother had promised to keep, and Linnet watched him take it, the whole weight of it, without flinching or making an excuse, and she thought that whatever else was true of him, that was something.
"It's late," Linnet said at last. "And I'm tired, and I don't think anything is going to be decided tonight that wouldn't be decided better in the morning. Keziah, where shall I sleep?"
The girl blinked. "There's Caleb's room. I aired it. I put clean sheets on." She hesitated. "Unless you'd rather not. I could make up the bed in my mother's room and sleep in the kitchen."
"Caleb's room will be fine," Linnet said. "Thank you for the sheets."
She stood. Her legs were stiff from the wagon and the train before it. She picked up her leather case, and then, after a moment, she reached across the table and picked up the pasteboard box of her own letters too, and put it under her arm.
"I'd like to read these again," she said. "I'd like to read what I said to you, now I know who I was saying it to. And in the morning I would like you to show me your answers. The drafts, if you kept drafts."
"I kept them," Keziah said. "All of them. In the ranch ledger. In the back."
"Of course you did," Linnet said, and to her own surprise she found that she very nearly smiled. "Good night, Mr. Morgan."
"Good night, Miss Rudd," he said, and then, as she reached the door: "Ma'am. For what it's worth. Whatever you decide. You won't have to go back to that man in Reading on my account. I'll find the fare to anywhere else you want to go, if it takes selling the mules."